October Log Report - Yes, I’m that belated

Major games of the month

Finally finished Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart and played the whole of Nightmares from the Deep 2: The Siren’s Call, because I forgot I’d won the former in SG and wanted to play the second one for a PAGYWOSG event and because I give way more story impact to HOGs than they deserve. They were pretty good, albeit the second one has some of those adventure screen hidden collectibles with some of them being only sometimes visible which make attempts at 100% completion somewhat frustraring.

Kept playing Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, I think finishing off King Knight’s stages, playing a bit of the platform fighter’s “campaigns” (honestly rather meh, the fights are okay in chaotic way with decent stage hazards, but the mandatory bonus stage is a drag and the boss straight up plays unfair), and doing some general secret and challenge searches/attempts. My completion is super low in terms of achievements, but my backlog is too big to dwell on a bunch of campaigns where I only loved one of them (spoiler alert: I revisited a bit the next month).

Finally got around to playing Bleed after having quite enjoyed the second one a while agoe. It’s… hard to gauge. On one hand, the game really becomes quite a bit more engaging when you get to try it in higher difficulties where the bullet time power up is super necessary yet you know the basic ropes better, but maintaining a consistent style grading seems needlessly tough, only a handful of weapons feel useful, and most damningly, it’s really not as fun as the second one (it is harder if you’re looking for a greater challenge, but not out of particularly good level design). Arcade mode (one life in a game with no healing and tons of hazards) is only for masochists.

Played a few (a dozen? twentysomething?) runs of Caveblazers: it’s not really a Spelunky clone as I thought it was, even if it shares some very general traits. It’s more about combat and trying to get the best possible synergies. Barely advanced, partially because I kept trying to succeed in a combat trial even at times where my equipment wasn’t the best to try it. Most bosses seem to be extremely hard to tackle unscathed, so I am not optimisitic I’ll beat this one. It’s an okay roguelike if you don’t mind some cheap deaths every now and then and the RNG being heavily stacked against you.

Hollow Knight and The Binding of Isaac were staples yet again. No real progress in either: didn’t have any real goals in TBoI to snipe the last few runs (this is the original I’m talking about, that’s feasible) I haven’t done and in HK mostly did some sparring in the Hall of Gods.

Also played

Started Finding Teddy and got stomped in less than half and hour. But from the guide it seems what you’d think to be a music puzzle is actually a coded language one? Honestly that was a super letdown in how obtuse that was. I might come back, but my expectations are low.

But nothing beat in terms of disappointing adventure games Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle. It’s very old school in how it presents a bunch of scenes as points of view in a grid-wise first person manner, which ends up feeling rather disorienting instead of just having one or two views per room. The UI was close to non-existent and I am not even sure what I was supposed to do with many dark seeming dead ends and zero flavour text to indicate whether anything you were doing was either futile or getting to something. With the right frame of mind it might end up proving a good atmospheric game, but the night I played it it put me off.

Continued a bit of Earthworms amd Bad Dream: Coma. The former is a bit too chill for its own good since I was having a good time but haven’t finished it since a bit of progress in my last session (a seemingly frustrated objective did let me a bit down, but it wasn’t something unbearable). BD:C barely advanced, but I am coming to ropes with what it is. Turned out I malinterpreted a “skip all dialogue” prompt for a mere “advance dialogue” one, which did make things needlessly complicated.

Started Hotline Miami. While my one session this month ended in a crash, it was a rather fun forty minutes. It’s a weird mix of strategy and twitch reflexes in dealing with all the mobs. Wish a few things were more consistent, but respawning is so fast it never feels like the game is cheap, or at least not punishingly so.

Munin: did a few more levels. It’s not bad, but it’s still not particularly engaging. Stages rarely feel like they need to be a single level rather than a collection of mini-puzzles you must do without dying.

But also…

Played Bone Appetit for a short while. It was fun finding a secret passage, but it was not a particularly serious attempt to finish the secrets, just a (very short) chunk of game to briefly distract me before I decided to go watch Netflix that night. As I said before, it’s super recommended, but it’s compact structure means secrets aren’t particularly structured into larger sections/quests as they are in other Metroidvanias.

In this month’s section of “not really played”, sadly we have Oxenfree. Thought my PC would handle it well, but it didn’t, resulting in a few minutes of struggling before I realized this would be a PowerPoint presentation and deciding to be wise and skip until my other PC gets fully repaired.